Tea at Trianon: The Infamous Countess of Carlisle

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, October 7, 2021

The Infamous Countess of Carlisle

From Cryssa Bazos at English Historical Fiction Authors:

One of the most intriguing characters in historical fiction is Milady de Winter of the Three Musketeers. Alexandre Dumas depicted her as a lethal spy whose loyalties were sold to the highest bidder, notably the Cardinal Richelieu. The inspiration for Milady was a socialite and renowned beauty of her day, Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle. Though Lucy was not an agent of Cardinal Richelieu, she held court at a time of social upheaval when men were drawing battle lines against King Charles I. The real woman was even more fascinating than the fictional one.
Lucy Hay was born Lucy Percy in 1599 to Lady Dorothy Devereux and Henry Percy, the 9th Earl of Northumberland. Lady Devereux was the daughter of the Earl of Essex and Lettice Knollys whose second husband, Robert Dudley the Earl of Leicester, had once been a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, that is until he and Lettice married without the Queen’s permission. Through her maternal line, Lucy was the great, great granddaughter of Mary Boleyn, sister to Anne Boleyn.

On Lucy's father's side, the Percys were an old and respected bloodline having first arrived with William the Conqueror, and later, descendants of King Henry III. The family stood for centuries as the bulwark against Scottish and Welsh invasion of England. Given Lucy's stellar connections, she was well poised to be a courtly influence.

Unfortunately, her early years were marked by notoriety and not the favourable kind. When Lucy had been six years old, her father had been implicated in the Gunpowder Plot (to blow up Parliament and murder King James I) due to his kinship with one of the leading conspirators, Thomas Percy. For the next seventeen years, Lucy’s father was a prisoner of the Tower of London (along with famous prisoner Sir Walter Raleigh) and during this time Percy indulged his interest in alchemy and chemistry. He was committed to his experiments (even lost the hearing of one ear) and everyone called him the "Wizard Earl."

While Henry languished in the Tower, Lucy’s mother tried to secure her husband’s release. She appealed to her friend Queen Anne, who put in a good word with her husband, King James I, but unfortunately the King levied a crippling fine that the Percys couldn’t afford and they found their estates seized. This was Lucy’s early introduction to the influence women could yield in politics as well as the fickleness of royal prerogative [1].

Sometime around 1617, Lucy Percy caught the eye of James Hay, who would become the 1st Earl of Carlisle. At the time he was a baron and a widower. Her father was furious. His imprisonment put him at a disadvantage to squelch his daughter's choice, particularly since his wife favoured the match. Henry Percy did not have a high opinion of the Scottish faction at court, the courtiers who had followed King James to England upon his ascension of the English throne, and James Hay was one of the King’s more extravagant favorites. Henry Percy had been reputed to say, “I am a Percy and I cannot endure that my daughter should dance any Scottish jig.” (Read more.)

From Gods and Foolish Grandeur:

Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle, née Percy (1599 - November 5, 1660), English courtier known for her beauty and wit. Her charms were celebrated in verse by contemporary poets, including Thomas Carew, William Cartwright, Robert Herrick, and Sir John Suckling. She was later involved in many conspiracies and political intrigues during the English Civil War. She was the second daughter of Henry Percy, 9th earl of Northumberland, and his wife Dorothy Devereux. In 1617, she married James Hay (he would become Earl of Carlisle five years later) as his second wife, and became a conspicuous figure at the court of Charles I. After the death of her husband in 1636, she was rumored to have been, successively, the mistress of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, and then John Pym, his parliamentary opponent. Strafford valued her highly, but after his death, possibly as a result of her anger and disillusionment at his fall and execution, she devoted herself to Pym and gave herself to the interests of the parliamentary leaders, to whom she communicated the king's most secret plans and counsels. However, it appears she served both parties simultaneously, betraying communications on both sides, and doing considerable mischief by inflaming political animosities. (Read more.)